Uganda is a nation located in Southern Mid-Africa, and is ruled by Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. The LRA, also known as the Lord’s Resistance army, is a rebel group active in Uganda and the countries around it and was originally created by the woman Alice Lakwena (Lakwena). The group was known as the Holy Spirit Movement then and was mainly created, because Lakwena stated that she had a dream where the Holy Spirit told her to overthrow the Ugandan government, whom were mistreating the Acholi people in Uganda at the time. The movement gained much support and when the Ugandan government won a battle between the movement and itself Lakwena was exiled. This was when Joseph Kony (Kony), stepped in saying he was Lakwena’s cousin and that he was taking over. Kony renamed the movement the LRA, but due to particularly violent tactics many people began to leave the LRA and it was rapidly losing support. This then led the LRA to start using child soldiering, and raid many villages and kill or mutilate many people. Despite what some people believe, the LRA is still a deadly group that uses child soldiering, and human trafficking and continues to threaten Uganda and its neighbors today. While some children and adults are able to escape the wrath of the LRA, many are hurt, persecuted and forgotten about every year, by the group’s tactics. Children are taken during raids in villages near the borders of Uganda, Sudan, Congo, and the Central African Republic. The men are usually killed and the women flee, are killed, or trafficked. These raids are usually carried out by “child soldiers much younger than their victims,” where they are forced to kill possible relatives and kidnap other children. The male children that are taken are usually forc... ... middle of paper ... ...ey decide randomly for no reason at all to go to some villages and kill all of the people there and take only a few children and waste hundreds of others. One of these attacks was the Amoko massacre on December 7, 1991. If you were to ask someone about the Amoko massacre they would have no idea what you were talking about because the massacre was never put into any newspaper or magazine. Nekolina Lakot, who tells her story to a young social scientist about her experience, says, “there’s no one to listen to our story, it is good you have come.” The victims of these attacks are usually too shocked, sad, and afraid to tell their stories. These attacks are recorded but only sometimes and so many occur that sometimes it is hard to tell, for instance “the Amoko massacre was one out of around 230 unknown events and one of 5 massacres that the LRA committed that day.”
Capturing children and turning them into child soldiers is an increasing epidemic in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone, speaks of his time as a child soldier. Beah was born in Sierra Leone and at only thirteen years old he was captured by the national army and turned into a “vicious soldier.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) During the time of Beah’s childhood, a civil war had erupted between a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front and the corrupt Sierra Leone government. It was during this time when the recruitment of child soldiers began in the war. Ishmael Beah recalls that when he was only twelve years old his parents and two brothers were killed by the rebel group and he fled his village. While he and his friends were on a journey for a period of months, Beah was captured by the Sierra Leonean Army. The army brainwashed him, as well as other children, with “various drugs that included amphetamines, marijuana, and brown brown.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) The child soldiers were taught to fight viciously and the effects of the drugs forced them to carry out kill orders. Beah was released from the army after three years of fighting and dozens of murders. Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier expresses the deep struggle between his survival and any gleam of hope for the future.
Haiti as a rich history, filled with many peoples’ blood and countless hopes of freedom. With such a rich history, the country has yet to become financially stable because of their past. From the beginning of the French settlement where slaves were brought over from Africa to harvest crops, to the dictatorship of the Duvalier family. Haiti has yet to see a time when they are not in need of help. After the racial caste systems were set in place, many people would not see a truly independent country. When France finally gave independence to Haiti, they did it for a price. After they paid that price, the US occupied them because of their location and many resources. Every year in Haiti’s history as a nation and before has effects on the world today. These effects are not hidden in fine print, but blatantly found within Haiti and those who have been involved with Haiti.
For decades, Uganda’s economy has suffered through disappointing economic policies and instabilities. These setbacks have been put forth by a chronically unreliable government, leaving it as one of the world’s poorest countries. Uganda’s weak infrastructure and corrupt government are two of the primary constraints against a continuation of economic growth. Uganda has ongoing military involvement in the War on Congo, wrongly taking money from the already deprived country and into the war. Many villages in Uganda also have to waste their precious money and time in pursuit of hiding places. They are faced with a group known as, The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). LRA is infamous for their twenty years of massacre and slaughter in Uganda, causing an estimated 1.5 million internally displayed persons. Several people are questioning why the LRA is still terrorizing the country and criticizing the government’s commitment to putting an end this horrific group. The Inspector General of Government (IGG) ...
Throughout the twentieth century, Rhodesia from 1960’s to the late 1970’s have always been in a struggle to fight for their independence. They had to deal with the British colonist that settled into their land and had taken over control of the country for the past couple of years. Due to the decolonisation of African countries after the second world war it gave many influences and reasons for Rhodesia to search to become an independent country. That all changed when they fully receive their independence in 1980 and during that time they fought for the control of their country, Rhodesia. The name was later changed to Zimbabwe due to a revolutionary struggle they had in their country. The battle to govern Rhodesia and also by the agreement of the Internal Settlement between the fighting forces to find and create peace
Mali is a landlocked country in North West Africa. It is bordered with Algeria to the South, Niger to the East, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire to the south and Senegal and Mauritania to the west. Modern day Mali is nowhere close to what it was at its peak in the 1300s. It was a flourishing empire, and one of the three empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade. It covered twice the size of modern day France, meaning around 1,500,000 kilometres square. However during the Scramble of Africa, France seized control of Mali making it a part of French Sudan. After the independence from the French, French Sudan became the Federation of Mali. However Senegal left, leaving Sudan occupying Mali. After a coup in 1991, Mali became an independent country. Now however, Mali is 1,240,000 Kilometres Square with a Gross Domestic Product of just 631 dollars per capita, compared to 43,185 dollars per capita in the United Arab Emirates. Mali has a population of around 14 million people. The southern part of Mali is more populated because it features the Niger and Senegal rivers. Mali’s prominent natural resource is gold. Actually it is the third largest producer of gold in all of Africa, but however the country is still poor. One of the arising problems in Mali, is humanitarian rights. The Tuareg rebellion, and a political upheaval generated by a March military coup led to a deterioration in respect to the human rights in Mali. After the occupation of the North, the respect to the human rights in Mali fell drastically forcing about 400,000 northern residents being displaced. Several armed groups, took control of territories in the North, and abused civilians. This abuse includes sexual abuse, looting and pillaging houses, and setting executions, rec...
“Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults” (“Child Soldiers” 1). This quotation by Olara Otunnu explains that children are forced into becoming weapons of war. Children under 18 years old are being recruited into the army because of poverty issues, multiple economic problems, and the qualities of children, however, many organizations are trying to implement ways to stop the human rights violation.
Sudan is the biggest nation in Africa and around six million people live in Darfur. The massacres in Darfur began in 2003 and still continue today. The genocide is let by equipped Arab soldiers (also known as the Janjaweed). The Janjaweed soldiers dismantled communities, corrupted the point of supply of water, killed, abused, and tormented innocent people. Millions of people in Darfur were left without homes and forty-eight thousand dead. Sudan has been in two civil wars since their freedom in 1956. There was then a fight for limited supplies and wanderers began to fight for land. This led to a war between North Sudan against South Sudan. In 1972, the first domestic war comes to a finish. Eleven years later the second, and deadliest, war begins. Over four millions were left without a home and over two million were killed in a span of twenty years. The government rejected any information of disturbance in Darfur. In 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the North versus the South fight. South Sudan gained more legislative control in the agreement. In 2009, Sudan president Omar Bashir was wanted for felonies against mankind and later wanted for genocide. Omar Bashir has fled to different countries where he has been protected.
In Wendy Glauser’s Northern Uganda Cautiously Courts Freedom as Peace Talks Progress (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/1675/northern-uganda-cautiously-courts-freedom-as-peace-talks-progress), negotiations between the Ugandan government and the LRA are discussed. Time after time, Joseph Kony has been given opportunities to sign peace treaties but he has denied. Now that these negotiations have been going on for quite some time now, more and more people are willing to give in to Kony’s conditions to ensure peace than they were before.
Stolen from their own home, or convinced and coerced into living the life of a child soldier, children are brought into armed groups such as RENAMO in Mozambique and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Some children in search of food, survival, or to avenge atrocities in their communities; others have been physically abducted for war purposes only. (McManimon) Child and families are sometimes convinced and persuaded wit...
“Darfur Genocide.” World Without Genocide. William Mitchell School of Law, n.d. Web. 16 April 2014. .
Soldiers within the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) were comparably much harsher and were associated with the tactical use of violence. “The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group operating in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002, was notorious for raping and mutilating the civilian population” (Poulatova, 2013, 2). The role of children within the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), were extremely exceedingly different from the role of children of the Civil Defense Force (CDF). “In the RUF, child fighters were often on the front lines as a kind of human shield or first line of defense” (Shepler, 2014, 165). Often times, leaders put children on the front lines not only making them human shields, but also a mechanism to kill the enemy. They were used to undermine the enemies in the chance that the opposing side hesitated in killing a child (Shepler, 2014). This was a tactical strategy used by the leaders, which often times resulted in the large-scale death of children because they were placed on the front lines as human
1a.) In 1987 a small group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) emerged in Northern Uganda. The leader of the group is currently Joseph Kony, who declares himself as a “prophet” and “messenger of the spirits”cite your source. The goal of Kony and the LRA is unclear as they claim they are looking for “peace” yet their actions continue to contradict what they are saying. Over the course of the last twenty years, groups under Konys command have killed thousands of innocent people, and displaced up to 40,000 (Johnson). When the LRA was at its prime, it had multiple thousands of active troops throughout countries such as Northern Uganda, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, as well as Asas, South Sudan, where they
The Rwanda genocide started with a civil war due to a corruptive government and the power
On a typical day, children in America spend their time doing homework, watching television, and playing with friends. However, in other parts of the world, children are being abducted, sold, and recruited into armies. Their fate and future is not longer under their control but in the hands of their leaders. According to the international definition, a child soldier is “any person below 18 years of age who is, or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes” (“Who”). While the use of child soldiers is prevalent in many countries, the worst cases occur in South Sudan due to an ongoing
Presently, just in the south west of Uganda there are about 188,000 refugees. These refugees come for various reasons such as, forced fleeing by war, violence, or persecution, and some are economic migrants who have voluntarily left their country to seek a better life elsewhere. This is a great improvement for Uganda compared to what it has faced in the past.